Setup a High-Converting Webinar in 8 Steps

The use of webinars to bring in leads has increased significantly over the past few years.

The main reason for this is simple; because the potential to bring in high quality leads from webinars is higher than just about any other digital strategy.

Not only is the potential higher, but business owners and marketers can also use webinars to take advantage of several other benefits.

On top of the ability to reach viewers from all across the world, webinars also provide an exceptionally low cost option for efficiently reaching your target market.

Ken Molay, founder of the Webinar Blog, performed a survey of a number of businesses that performed webinars regularly.

Of the 50 businesses he surveyed, over 30 of them were clear on the fact that the benefits of webinars far outweigh the costs associated with them.

On top of Molay’s findings, the team at MarketingSphera also ran a survey showing that 92% of B2B marketers say that webinars are an effective way to generate leads.

But while there are several clear benefits to webinars, many businesses and marketers struggle to take advantage of them because they are unsure of how to do so.

Thus is the purpose of this guide; to show you how you can setup a high-converting webinar in as few as ten steps.

After reading through this guide and implementing the material laid out within it, you should be in a much better position to create, market, and run a high-converting webinar.

#1 – Build a Strong Email List

If you really want to excel at a high level with your webinars, having a strong email list is a must.

At the end of the day, your webinars are not going to convert at a high level unless you have a sizeable targeted audience to present to.

While this audience does not have to be extremely large, have only a dozen people is going to make things difficult.

Email lists allow you to use your content, such as webinars, to stay in front of your target audience.

In addition, they provide you with the opportunity to build trust with potential customers, which puts them in a position where they are more likely to purchase from you when the need arises.

If you are struggling with how to build an email list, Social Triggers founder Derek Halpern put together a fairly informative post and video about How to Build an Email List that you would be wise to check out.

In the post, Halpern even goes as far as saying:

“If you’re not building an email list, you’re an idiot.”

But if you are struggling to build a list via content and social media, you can also use your webinars as an effective way to build a strong list.

Recording your webinars and making them a part of your content marketing plan is something that many businesses and marketers do.

It should be noted, however, that doing this can put you in a position where your live webinars are not reaching their potential as far as attendees; since viewers can just replay it later at their convenience.

For this reason, it is important that you create a mindset of scarcity with your webinars.

This can be done by making some webinars a one-time thing or by offering something additional of value for individuals who attend the live webinar.

At the end of the day, creating a high-converting webinar starts with having the audience to present to.

The best way to do this, as has been proven time and time again, is by building a strong email list.

#2 – Promote the Webinar to Your Target Audience

While building and maintaining a strong email list is one of the best ways to ensure attendance at your webinar, you cannot stop there.

Using only your email list is going to make it difficult to reach out to potential leads that have not already been pointed in your direction via email marketing.

So, in addition, you can use a few of the creative promotion tactics that Jenna Hanington of Pardot put together.

Some of the tactics she outlined included:

Sharing with social outlets. Hanington points out that it is important that you share the details of your webinar on all relevant social sites. If you have not already, you should be honing in on the sites where your target market is already engaging.

Write a guest post. Writing a guest post is an extremely efficient way to get the news out about your webinar to your intended audience. Just be sure that the article features educational information to the readers and has a strong call-to-action for your upcoming webinar.

Promote in LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn Groups provide the opportunity for you to get right into the audience that you are looking to attract. You will want to stay away from promotional spamming, however, and be sure that you are providing relevant insight to the group from time to time.

Change Social Profile Images. Changing your social profile images to advertise your upcoming webinar can be extremely effective if you have built up a strong following.

Hanington goes on to list five more possibilities, although the four listed above are the most relevant to just about every industry.

Utilizing her input and going to work to promote your webinar can help ensure that you have the necessary amount of attendees to increase the chances of high conversion.

#3 – Recruit Speakers or Partner with Another Brand

While promotion has already been talked about quite a bit in this guide, another way that you can continue to build your viewership is by recruiting speakers or partnering with another brand. Doing so enables you to build a partnership with other authorities in your industry while increasing the likelihood that more viewers will attend.

Not only that, but having a speaker who is known as an authority in your industry can add a significant amount of credibility to the event.

If you are wondering how you can effectively recruit speakers for your webinar, the team at Simplicity Marketing put together an informative post on how to do so.

While having a speaker or partnering with another brand is not absolutely necessary, it is optimal if your main goal is to create a high converting webinar.

#4 – Structure Your Webinar Effectively

One of the main mistakes that many webinar creators make is that they create something that is almost solely catered towards promoting their products or services.

As Lindsay Kolowich of HubSpot points out, however, the most successful webinars are:

Educational

Clearly Communicated

Entertaining

As you can see, not one of those the things she lists has anything to do with being promotional towards your business.

Kolowich goes on to talk about education as being:

“One of the most powerful tools you can use to make changes happen. Webinars need to have some type of educational component to it – whether you’re educating your audience about a product, a service, a new piece of content, how to use a tool, and so on.”

While these three elements are all important, it is also essential that you make your webinar your own.

The way you structure your webinar should be something that is unique to your business.

Find different ways to educate, communicate, and entertain your audience and build a structure that works for the viewers you are aiming to attract.

When it comes to webinar structure, one thing that you want to be absolutely sure of is that you are not presenting boring points for too long.

As Joby Blume of Bright Carbon states about the overall length of webinars:

“Generally speaking, any longer than 25 minutes without some sort of change or break can be hard to pull off. Don’t just schedule an hour because that’s what everyone else does – it’s just too hard to stay interesting (for that long).

Another point Blume makes is that you should not be taking 5-10 minutes to introduce yourself and/or your guests.

If you have people attending your webinar, there is a good chance they are already aware of both you and your guest’s credentials.

For this reason, you should not be spending any more than a minute or two with introductions.

If you really feel the need to display the credentials of you and your guests during the webinar, do so in the corner of the video feed or on a beginning slide in the presentation as you go over what will be talked about.

#5 – Plan Out Your Visuals

Just about every webinar depends on both audio and visuals for the business to get their message across.

For this reason, it is imperative that your visuals are as engaging as possible.

An interesting strategy that many webinar creators utilize is to provide documents, guides, or white papers for attendees to download during or after the webinar.

This can be used as a way of building trust with viewers that may not know much about you or what you offer.

It can also be an effective way to utilize the law of reciprocity to increase conversions when you get to the close.

#8 – Create a Strong Close and Call-to-Action

Possibly the most important part of creating a high converting webinar is to put together a strong close and call-to-action.

Without it, you will just be creating an educational and entertaining webinar that is nothing more than a branding opportunity.

Taki Moore, from step six of this guide, says that, during the closing process:

“You need to make an irresistible offer, and give them a reason to do it right now. You have to be very clear on what they are getting, what it is going to do for them, how to get it right now, and why they should.”

If high conversion is your goal, this is the part of the process where you cannot be afraid to go all out.

The build-up to this point should have created excitement for what the future possibilities are available for your clients.

Continue that enthusiasm and set up a situation where it is extremely difficult for attendees that have made it to the end to refuse the offer that you have.

The Final Word

As you can see, creating a high converting webinar is not as difficult as you may think.

While it will take a significant amount of work and patience, the results that can be achieved are greater than just about any other avenue available to business owners.

Following through and focusing on the steps outlined in this guide should help point you in the right direction towards creating your own high converting webinar.

Lastly, let me know your thoughts and any other tips for creating a high-converting webinar that have worked for you. Leave a comment below and I look forward to hearing from you.

About Sean Donahoe

Sean is one of the most recognized industry leaders in business and marketing. As a popular speaker, author, consultant he has helped over 50,000 students world wide find success in their businesses and has consulted with Fortune 500 companies and businesses of every size grow and thrive...